Netezza Performance Server — A Hybrid Cloud Warehouse
Netezza is back, and it’s better than ever! Netezza is faster, cloud-ready, and includes Cloud Pak for Data, IBM’s integrated data and AI platform. Additionally, Netezza will soon be available on your favorite cloud provider as a cloud-native service!
How did IBM revolutionize an appliance hidden deep in your data center into a modern and scalable hybrid cloud data warehouse? We’ll dig into the details to find out what’s new with Netezza and what occurred over the last few years to get us there. But first, let’s dive into IBM’s latest announcement to get a preview of Netezza on Cloud!
A Cloud-Native Netezza
IBM is doubling-down on Netezza with a new cloud-native offering, Netezza on Cloud. Based on container technology within Red Hat OpenShift, Netezza on Cloud joins extreme performance with robust high availability, scalability and seamless integration with Netezza on-prem and Cloud Pak for Data. And by launching on both AWS and IBM Cloud (and more to come), there has never been a better time to migrate workloads to the cloud!
Moving to Netezza on Cloud is easy because it’s the same engine as your on-prem Netezza — simply nzrestore your latest backup from Amazon S3 or IBM Cloud Object Storage and start working with your data! You can even continue to use your favorite nz-utilities or leverage the all-new REST APIs.
Being cloud-native means flexibility, and Netezza on Cloud will also soon offer the ability to independently scale your compute and storage as your capacity needs change. And because the SPU processing nodes are managed by Red Hat OpenShift, high availability is a native feature that provides resilience though automated hardware failure recovery.
Finally, automated backup to Amazon S3 or IBM Cloud Object Storage keeps your data safe, and lets you benefit from cross-AZ (availability zone) resiliency.
So how did IBM do it?
Enter Red Hat OpenShift
IBM made a groundbreaking acquisition in July of 2019: Red Hat. A leader in open hybrid cloud, and most popular for its Enterprise Linux distribution, Red Hat also is well known for OpenShift — a container orchestration platform powered by Kubernetes. OpenShift opened the door to revolutionizing IBM’s data platform — Cloud Pak for Data (CPD) — which was released in 2018 and now runs exclusively on OpenShift (on-prem and on-cloud). CPD is an end-to-end data and AI platform designed to help make data more accessible and trusted. Through its integrated software suite it enables organizations to easily gain insights from data and realize a path to infusing applications with artificial intelligence (see The AI Ladder).
CPD is a microservices-based platform which tightly integrates tooling in data governance, BI, data visualization, data science, machine learning (powered by Watson), and intelligent data virtualization. With IBM’s investment in open technology and container-based microservices, this paved the way for the next Netezza, which plays a foundational role in every step of the AI Ladder.
The next Netezza
Netezza has always been the best data warehouse for analytics. And now, powered by the same engine but with a modern architecture, it is faster and better than ever! Boasting a 3X performance improvement over its predecessor, Netezza Performance Server (NPS) is ready to accelerate your business by leveraging key technological advancements at the core of its database engine.
A seamless upgrade from previous generations
As with previous generations, simply use just one command to move your tables, data, stored procedures and more from your existing Netezza into the new NPS. And with backwards compatibility, your existing applications and SQL clients will continue to work even with the earlier version Netezza drivers!
Cross-generational compatibility
Leverage your existing Netezza system as test or development system and upgrade production to the latest NPS. You can even restore from previous generation backups. Since they run the same engine you continue to realize your investment in the earlier generation system.
To continue leading the data warehousing market in this new age of hybrid cloud, Netezza packs some powerful enhancements. Here are a few of them:
- A leap in Performance
Reporting and ETL processes will shift into overdrive thanks to Netezza’s blazing fast NVMe SSD drives. And with almost double the memory and 64-bit FPGA pre-processors, you’ll gain additional capacity for more workloads and better concurrency.
- Integration with Cloud Pak for Data
Because Netezza now ships pre-integrated with Cloud Pak for Data, it offers much more than data warehousing. With this platform, organizations can leverage its additional capabilities at no additional charge to fully realize the power of their data. Further, Netezza’s processing engine (SPUs) run on dedicated processing servers, isolated from CPD workloads and ensuring consistent and reliable performance.
- Scalability
NPS can expand in-place. Start small and grow incrementally as business demands increase. Gone are the days of trucking in a whole new appliance to expand capacity — the new Netezza can grow within the rack!
Finally, Netezza has been re-born into an OpenShift world with an ecosystem based on containers and microservices. This foundational change opened the door to the all-new cloud-native Netezza which is fully based on container technology. So how can you leverage Netezza on Cloud when all your applications are still on-prem? The new Netezza is cloud-ready and allows for backup and restore direct to/from Amazon S3 (or IBM Cloud Object Storage). This makes leveraging Netezza on Cloud as a Test/Dev or Disaster Recovery environment a cost-effective solution. And with the integrated CPD Virtualization, you can link data from both (or even more) platforms in a single view!
Start planning your upgrade to the new Netezza — in your data center with Cloud Pak for Data System, or on the Cloud!
Learn more:
Netezza Homepage
https://www.ibm.com/analytics/netezza
Cloud Pak for Data
https://www.ibm.com/demos/collection/Cloud-Pak-for-Data/?lc=en
Frank Goytisolo is a Sr. IT Professional and Hybrid Data Management Pre-Sales Engineer at IBM. Frank has worked with IBM clients all over North America, helping them build smart data platforms to better understand and leverage their data.
